The Boy Who Wasn't
by Spazzkitty
Summary: Lovino had always sarcastically referred to himself as 'the boy who wasn't' Feliciano was the boy who was responsible for stopping a dictator, who was famous and adored, who was magically capable, and Lovino, well...wasn't. Harry Potter AU. AKA The AU that nobody asked for except for me, and that I then provided for myself. Eventual Spamano because of course there will be.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hey, guys. Yeah. I know. I don't have an explanation for what I'm doing here either. It's the year of our lord 2019, and my brain was like 'hey, you should write Hetalia'. So. Here I am. Writing Hetalia.

Also, yes, this is Spazz, the original author of the account, and not the person who was supposed to take over for me but didn't. Probably gonna have to change that name. Ableism isn't cool, kids, and I'm not sure if being diagnosed with ADHD during the literal years away allows me to reclaim that term.

* * *

There was a very long time when they weren't sure he was going to get a letter at all.

Lovino asserted whenever it was brought up that he did not care, and that wizards were fucking stupid anyway, and that Hogwarts was probably a dirty shithole, and then he went upstairs and locked himself in the closet while his grandfather and Feliciano pretended they couldn't hear him sobbing through the paper-thin walls.

The last time his grandfather tried to give him a heart-to-heart about how important and loved he was, Lovino punched him in the dick so hard he was incapacitated on the floor for a good fifteen minutes. The last time Feliciano tried, he ended up sympathy-crying for an hour and massively dehydrating himself. Eventually, Romulus decided to just buy him a Kneazle and hope that some degree of animal instinct would be able to comfort his grandson.

Thus, at seven years old, Lovino Vargas went to Diagon Alley for the first time.

They had to take the knight bus, because side-along apparition always upset Lovino's stomach. Romulus brought a Caprese Salad in a small tupperware, and tiny fingers picked out the tomatoes as the bus ricocheted around corners, ignoring traffic lights and kicking up tiny pebbles that dinged against the hubcaps of other cars.

"The mozzarella too, Lovino. You can't only eat the tomatoes."

"_Vai a morire ammazzato." _ Romulus's eyebrows furrowed. Where the hell did Lovi pick that kind of language up from? _He_ certainly didn't talk like that, and they didn't know any other Italian families in Britain.

"Lovino," Romulus said sternly, and watched his grandson squirm in his seat. "I will take you home."

Hazel eyes beseeched him as his head whipped around. "Nonno!"

"The mozzarella." Reluctantly, sullenly, sticky fingers picked up the white chunks of cheese. The secretly amused grandfather watcheed Lovino lick every trace of oil and tomato juice off before taking a mouse-sized bite of the cheese.

Better than nothing.

They dismounted the Knight Bus on the outskirts of London, and Lovino promptly displayed both hands, palm-up. A simple cleaning charm took care of any residual stickiness, and then the two were off.

That morning, Lovino had insisted on dressing himself, and had chosen the neatly-pressed shirt and pants that were usually set aside for weekend mass, as well as his best black shoes. Evidently this added a degree of smug self-assurance that was typically hard to find in Lovino's skulking slouch, and Romulus took notice of his grandson's unusually heavy footfalls as he clearly tried to give his steps some grativas.

"I want to open the wall," he announced self-importantly, tilting his pointed chin to defiantly stare down his Nonno.

Romulus's lips twisted into a half-smile. There was something undeniably cute about his tiny dictator. "You don't have a wand, _passerotto_."

"Give me yours," he demanded.

Normally, Romulus would say no. Neither of his grandchildren were particularly good at keeping things unbroken. Lovino's chorea hadn't been much of a problem once they had gotten him to drink a daily potion, but it seemed that the boy was naturally clumsy as well. The odds of getting his wand back in one piece were...admittedly small.

But today was about Lovino. Feliciano had never been permitted to hold Romulus's wand, and he knew that letting the older boy do so would speak louder to his importance than anything that could be said. So, he swallowed the dismissal and instead said, "when we get closer, I will. Be careful with it, mm?"

Lovino's whole face lit up, hazel eyes sparkling, dimples pressing into his face, fingers gripping his grandfather's pants. "You mean it, Nonno? I can? Just me?"

"Just you," he confirmed, almost wanting to cry. How long it had been since he'd seen that smile…

His spirits much higher, Lovino babbled to his grandfather nearly without breathing as they made their way to the Leaky Cauldron.

"Nonno, I want to go to Fortiscue's first! And then I want to go to the bookshop, and I want to look at the brooms, and I want to see the wand man, the really old one, and I want-"

"Hush, _piccolo_," his grandfather laughed. "We'll go wherever you like."

"Then Fortiscue's."

"Alright. And what would you like there?"

"I want vanilla ice cream." No surprise-that was the only flavor Lovino would eat. "And I want a lemon ice cream. So-so I can take it home, and eat it later." Romulus bit back a smile. Lovino hated fruit flavors-unlike Feliciano, who loved them. It would be much easier if Lovino were able to be honest with his feelings, but the therapist had insisted that they not push, and so he simply said, "Then we should go at the end of the day, so it won't melt on the way home."

"Tch, fine," Lovino said with no real bite. "Is that it? The Leaking Place?"

"The Leaky Cauldron. Yes, this is it. Hand in mine, please."

Making a great show of grumbling, Lovino let his grandfather take his hand, and they went into the leaky cauldron together.

It was still early in the morning, and the Leaky Cauldron was largely unpopulated. A few wizards quietly sipped at coffee here and there, but there were only a handful of people around, which was how Romulus had wanted it. The eyes of strangers flickered to him as he walked by-their expressions grew shocked and their eyes darted excitedly to Lovino, only to take him in properly and look away dismissively. Red with a combination of anger and shame, Lovino stuck two fingers up at them.

"Lovino," Romulus murmured.

"They're unhappy," Lovino said loudly, glaring around at everyone in the shop, daring them to meet his eyes. "They wanted Feliciano and instead they got me, and so they're unhappy."

"Don't be silly, _passerotto_. Come. The bricks are in the back. Or should I open the wall for you?"

Lovino looked at him for a moment, eyes flickering with something like betrayal, before he pushed his way past his grandfather and out the back of the pub. Romulus frowned softly. His little sparrow really was too perceptive for his own good. A Ravenclaw or a Slytherin for sure-that is, if the whispers of 'squib' in the London parlors weren't on the mark.

The older man stood behind the boy in the tiny courtyard out back. When he was in a strop, Lovino preferred to wait to be spoken to, and so Romulus was content to loiter, hands in his pockets. Eventually the boy turned, lips set in a scowl somehow even more vicious than ever. "You never stick up for me."

Surprise arched across Romulus's face. "Against them? _Tesoro_, they were just looking. Surely you wouldn't like me to pick fights with every person who looks at you."

The set of Lovino's jaw implied that, actually, that was what he wanted, but all he said was, "your wand."

Normally it was a bad idea to give a wand to a child when they were emotionally volatile. It could cause problems of the explosive and dramatic variety. But any peek of accidental magic, even wildly destructive magic, would have been a relief for Romulus, to show that despite what had happened, his grandson wasn't broken. Alas, when he handed over the wand, not a single spark went off between his strong fingers and his little one's little ones.

Now it was Romulus trying not to gaze at Lovino with bald-faced disappointment.

Oblivious to this, the wand-wielding boy gave the stick a few dramatic flourishes and, to protect his spirits, Rome wiggled his fingers in a little wandless charm to open the bricks right when his _piccolo_ tapped them properly.

"I did it!" He shrieked in delight, hurling himself into his grandfather's arms. His Nonno peppered his face in kisses.

"So you did." The lie tasted sweet, almost like caramel, and went down easily. "Now let's go get you a pet, my darling."

The hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley was good for Lovino and served to help him forget how angry he was. There was a frenzied energy largely absent in the Italian wizard community, and Romulus privately thought that little head might unscrew if he kept whipping it about to see so many things. This entire trip had been built off the condition that Lovino hold Romulus's hand the entire time and though he often forgot and tried to dash off to look at something that caught his fancy, his grandfather was able to recapture his wrist and force them to head over at a more sedate pace. But Lovino loved the vibrancy, loved looking in the shop windows, eagerly bounced over to the bookstore and bragged about his (actually rather mediocre) reading prowess. The curious-turned-pitying expressions were lost in a sea of faces, and occasionally a shop vendor would venture out of their store to actively sell their wares. Rome himself was jokingly turning off the advances of one of the older women working at Madame Rosmerta's when Lovino yanked on his robes for attention.

"Nonno! Nonno, look at _that!"_

Romulus froze. A heartbeat. Two. Three.

Lovino was oblivious to the sudden stiffness of the hand holding his, and simply pulled harder. "Nonno, that's amazing! What is that? It's so big and scary!"

The crowd itself had gone silent. So many faces, turned towards Lovino. The only person who didn't was the animal's handler, still dutifully tugging the harness through the streets, hugging the sides so business could go on as usual.

"Lovino," his grandfather tried, his throat clenching.

"I want that! Nonno, buy me one of those!"

But there was nothing where Lovino's finger was pointing. Just a harness-a horse's harness, floating midair where his grandson's tiny finger followed like an accusation, and each heartbeat was _painful, _the valves slotting into place like iron bars as it struggled to pump blood into a body that did not want it.

A thestral. Lovino could see thestrals.

_The door was open._

_The door was open, and Chiara was a scatterbrain, just like he was sometimes, so she might have left it unlocked, but Gabriele had a good head on his shoulders, never let her forget, and anyway, why would it be open?_

_Why the fuck was the door open._

_Something was slowly seeping across the floor, and it looked like blood, just for a second, but it was water, with clumps of sod, come from the plant, likely, the potted one that Gabriele had been trying to help Lovino grow crocuses in, the pot was broken and the water was oozing out but why was the pot broken, why was it so silent in the house, the door was open and the flower pot was broken, and why the __**fuck-**_

_Romulus heard a small, thin wail and, before he even realized, started to run._

"Nonno! You aren't listening to me! Stop staring already, _stronzo_! I want you to-"

"Lovino," Romulus said in a shaking voice he had never heard before. "For once, please, shut _up._"

In slow motion, Romulus watched in horror as his grandson's heart trembled, cracked, shattered.

"Hold on-Lovino, wait-" Romulus tried, but Lovino ripped his hand from his Nonno's grip and disappeared alone down a narrow alley.


	2. Chapter 2

Diagon Alley is at its busiest when the sun is directly overhead. Positions of the celestial bodies matter for rituals and brewing and it's the nature of rubber-neckers to stop and gawk at shop windows. One woman with loosely curled hair hesitates in just such a manner, only for a young boy to barrel into her.

"Excuse me," she huffs, and the boy turns wide, sweet eyes on her.

"I-I'm so sorry," he says timidly and she sighs, thawing despite herself.

"Don't let it happen again," she orders, and doesn't bother to watch as he scampers around the corner.

The second he's out of sight, Lovino holds up a handful of galleons he'd swiped from her pockets and counts them, muttering, "bitch."

The first time he had run through the alleys back here, it hadn't taken long for Romulus to find him, but he'd come out...different. Lovino had stopped opening up to his therapist, preferring instead to stare her down as she tentatively tried to prod around the bruised parts of his psyche. Sessions with Feliciano, sessions with Romulus, sessions with both, sessions with neither-Lovino was done, done, done. His transformation from wounded child to emotionally detached preteen was…

Honestly, the biggest fucking relief.

"Finally," he breathes to himself, counting and counting the coins again just to be sure that he miraculously made the cash before the deadline. Finally enough. Lovino has been picking coins from pockets two at a time since that day, sneaking away through Nonno's Floo network and slumming around Knockturn Alley, keeping his stash hidden in trash cans around the city.

Today is the day. It's just before his fourteenth birthday and he's finally getting a Thestral foal.

"Sadik!" Lovino shouts, pounding his fist on the rickety house that he knows the Turkish man lives in. "Sadik, open your fucking door! _Cornuto_! _Figlio di puttana_!"

"I don't speak Italian," a dry voice notes from an upstairs window, "but something tells me that wasn't 'Hello, it is I. Please attend to my person.'"

Lovino turns his glare up a few floors, where a tanned boy with a mask Juliettes on the window sill like some kind of douchey philosopher who read the Phantom of the Opera and thought that covering _both eyes_ would make him look like _doubly a sexual predator_.

Lovino hates him, passionately and often, and since hate is the only emotion he can regularly access, he's very good at it. Hating Sadik is one of his favorite hobbies, and on his birthday, why not indulge himself?

"Bring my horse!" he bellows, kicking his stupid door. Behind the mask, Sadik winces, and Lovino kicks it twice more for good measure.

"_Stupefy_," Sadik snarls, and Lovino nimbly leaps out of the way, directly into a trash can. Not for the first time, he wishes he could just cast a fucking shield or something, that he could go to Hogwarts and not his awful muggle school, that he was _Feliciano_-

His horse. He's here for his horse.

The Adnan house is thin and tall, sandwiched between other buildings and made of dark grey bricks. On the street level is a shopfront advertising 'Adnan's Exotic Animals' in carefully lettered silver paint, and from the second floor up are the family's lodgings, with a rickety fire escape stretching between them. Lovino knows that if he takes a running jump and goes off the trash cans, he can just manage to grab the bottom of the ladder and haul himself up on the fire escape. He knows that Sadik knows it, too.

"I'll come up," he warns.

With an eight-second sigh, Sadik ducks back in and slams the window down. He might have been rolling his eyes. Why the fuck does he even wear that mask? Lovino knows he was in the war or whatever, and he probably has scars from it. But who cares? Pretty much everyone was in the war, if they're Sadik's age. If they have a problem with his face being screwed up, they really need to get over themselves.

Apparently Lovino isn't a valued customer, because Sadik takes his sweet fucking time getting downstairs. Eventually, though, the front door opens and the pleasant smell of incense wafts out. "Get in, impertinent brat."

Lovino feels a cheeky grin trying to curl at his lips but he ruthlessly squashes it-even so, there's probably a lightness to his expression that few other people are allowed to see. "If you insist," he drawls, and goes into the store.

Adnan's Exotic Animals is dimly lit and tiny. There are a few stools lined up against the far wall, but Lovino's never seen anyone sitting in them. The walls are papered in faded posters advertising things in another language—he'd asked Sadik once, only to be told that the model waving at them with the coy grin was Sadik's father—and there's an umbrella stand in the corner holding an array of swords.

The shop is a relic of time, but it's unapologetic about its age. A memorial to Sadik father, maybe, as another casualty of war.

There's a counter with an old Muggle cash register, but in the display case are the wares themselves, and most attention tends to be drawn there.

The Adnan family is the only one in Diagon Alley who stores their wares outside London. It seems so obvious when you think about it, that having a portkey to take you offsite opens up all sorts of possibilities in what sorts of things you can sell, but everyone else prefers to pack all their crap into practically no space. Instead of forcing animals into city habitats, the Adnans—or rather, Sadik—keep meticulously hand-painted figurines on the shelves of the display case. Lovino has spent many an hour there, watching the wyvern stalk across the shelf, laughing as the hippogriff picks fights with the unicorn. As always, though, his eye stalls on the thestral, pawing idly at the ground, shaking itself, stretching its frail-looking skeletal wings.

Sadik watches him watching it and chuckles. "Today's the day, eh?"

"Yes," Lovino says breathlessly, unable to tear his eyes away from the miniature horse. He shoves his bag of galleons into the shop-keep's hand, is vaguely aware of the low voice in the background, counting, recounting, re-recounting.

"Well, I'll be damned," he whistles. "You did it."

"Of course," he dismisses irritably. "Wouldn't've shown up if I didn't."

"How did such a wee thing manage to get so much money?"

'Literal years of stealing,' his brain provides. His mouth instead supplies the much more palatable answer of "magical wizard shit."

""That's a word for it," Sadik says dryly, but the two seem to have settled on the unspoken agreement to keep the felonious elephant in the room to its own devices. "Alright. Let me get the portkey and I'll come back with your girl."

Lovino is left alone in the shop, which means alone with his thoughts. Generally, that's not a great place for him to be, especially today. It's Feliciano and his birthday in a few days-by which he means, Feliciano's birthday and also incidentally the day that Lovino had been pushed out a few years prior. Romulus used to throw them a combination party and put serious effort into keeping the festivities balanced between each sibling, but after years of hostile rebuffing, Lovino is now kept blissfully out of the birthday nonsense, and the day has over time turned into the Feliciano-worshiping three-ring-shitshow that it was likely intended to be since the creation of the fucking cosmos. But this year is special-the year that Feliciano turns 11, and therefore the year that Feliciano gets his fancy letter to the posh school of privileged dillholes that Lovino wasn't good enough to scrape by an invitation for. There is no question that Feliciano is getting an invitation, just like there had been no question that Lovino was not getting one. The only question is how much muggle screamo Lovino will have to blast out of his speakers to pretend like all this Hogwarts bullshit is some asbestos-induced hallucination.

He doesn't care. He doesn't care.

He doesn't fucking care.

Under his breath, Lovino murmurs it again and again-'I don't care, I don't care'-and shoves that bitter part of him as far down as it will go, into the dregs of his heart. Thankfully, as he does so, that familiar numbness comes up to swallow him. He feels almost detached from his own body, like nothing can hurt him, and he's just a bystander floating idly around as terrible things happen to this Italian kid he happens to be watching in the world's most boring movie. It's hard to remember what happens when he's like this-but honestly, that's more of a plus than a drawback, and Lovino lets his awareness float further and further away as his surroundings feel more and more dreamlike.

"Here," Sadik interrupts, and Lovino blinks at him with a slow, lazy detachment. And then he really focuses, fights against that fuzziness, because she's _there_.

It's his girl.

The thestral foal is about the size he'd expected. It means she fits comfortably in the shop, but obviously that she needs space to walk around, so it isn't a long-term option for her. She's sleek and dark, but her eyes are burning coals in her gaunt face.

Lovino opens his mouth. Closes it, opens it. A tear trickles from his eye, but it feels like it's on somebody else's face.

"Cripes, kid, are you alright?"

After a few more fish impressions, Lovino grates out words. "She's here," he says finally.

Sadik's gaze softens, and he rests a hand on Lovino's shaking shoulders. "She's beautiful, yeah? Tame as can be, and such an elegant little lady." As if to supplement this, the horse sneezes daintily.

"I love her," Lovino chokes out, reaching for her muzzle with one hand, gently pressing two fingertips to her nose. She nuzzles back and he flinches, feeling-something in his chest. It's white hot and sharp, a savage sort of joy, rumbling with the power of an earthquake, fierce and bright and unapologetic, and a delighted beam stretches across his face-

The windows _explode_.

Sadik roars out a curse and tackles Lovino to the ground, shielding him with his own much larger body as the thestral rears in obvious alarm. Lovino's head throbs dizzily as he tries to understand what on earth happened, as he waits for some terrorist to kick down the door.

It's silent. Calm, almost.

Slowly, Sadik pulls himself off Lovino, keeping his stance alert, but as a threat continues to not materialize, his posture goes from soldier-like to slouched. His masked gaze seems to flit around the room still, but distractedly, and it always stops on Lovino again.

"Can I _help_ you, fuckface?" Lovino mutters, more shaken than he'd like to admit.

"...No," Sadik says eventually. "Go home, brat. Bring your girl with you. And, whatever you do, stay calm."

Something in the way he says that makes Lovino feel...strange. But that strangeness manifests as an aggressive avoidance. He doesn't want to be here anymore. "Fine," he mutters, sullenly, gratefully. He lifts one hand to rub his girl's muzzle and nearly runs in his haste to get her out of the store.

The plan to obtain and rear his own thestral has been in the works for years now, and it's all relied on one constant. It had been a gamble, and a barely-remembered one, but as Lovi's girl presses to his side, he can't help but see how many people slide around him, too preoccupied to think too much about bumping into something not there, eyes never stopping for a second.

As he thought, it's hard to protest the adoption of a pet you don't even know is there.

He leads her through the Floo that Flourish and Blotts owner lets him use (and that's a struggle and a half, to lead her through the stacks of books without upsetting them, alerting people to what he's doing, or accidentally harming her), but once they're inside Nonno's flat, Lovi brings her to his room. She paces around, tossing her mane and giving everything a thorough examination.

Lovino is so, so in love.

That night, Nonno cooks spaghetti. Feliciano gets sauce all over his upper lip, and he and Nonno laugh like their typical buffoon selves. That night, Feliciano is shot down for yet another goodnight hug, and cries to Nonno about it even though he's already too goddamn old for that sort of sniveling. Lovi's forced to make his two-thousandth half-arsed apology that even Feliciano doesn't believe, and he spends his night sleeping curled up on the floor with his baby girl.

That morning, Lovino is woken from his spot by the screeching of an agitated owl pressing its beak into the doorbell. That morning, Feliciano's Hogwarts letter is dropped off with surprisingly little fanfare.

That morning, three years late, Lovino's is, too.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Lovino had spent the week leading up to his eleventh birthday in a distracted haze, forgetting to wash his plate after dinner and lying awake late into the night. Nonno had been evasive when he first asked about his Hogwarts letter, and remained so beyond insisting that Lovino not get too disappointed if he wasn't able to go and asserting that it really didn't matter how much magic a person could do. There were no high expectations on a letter coming, but that little whisper in the back of his mind coaxed him with a tempting _what if?_

What if he had a secret potential that even Nonno didn't know about? What if he was just as special as Feliciano was, or maybe even _more_ special? What if everyone around him had written him off his whole life, only to realize that Lovino was just as good as the rest of them-just as clever, just as talented, just as deserving.

During that week, before the eventual climax of soul-rending disappointment, Lovino sat and dreamed about the first thing he would do if-_if-_-his letter came, too.

His imagined responses always shifted flavors depending on the day, but all were pretty far from what actually happens, which is this:

Lovino Vargas, at thirteen years old, throws the unholiest tantrum known to man.

It's slow, at first, a steady inhale of the tide to some dark, pulsing thing off the coast. It's easy for Lovino to drift. The words on the letter roll through his brain and off to wherever useless words go, and he stares at the book list for an unreasonably long time, taking in none of it. He feels emotion trying to crescendo into something, rumbling off in the distance as the sand is sucked hungrily into the vortex. Feliciano is babbling. Nonno is babbling. One, or both, of them cry in happiness.

The shape of it takes form over the horizon, imposing and vengeful, a natural disaster, breaths away from smashing the sandcastles below, waiting for that last little tug of gravity to set it into motion.

"Lovi," Feli squeals delightedly, "We'll be able to go _together_!"

Lovino fucking_ loses it_.

His fists clench as the wooden floor splinters and violent tremors shake the house. Lighting fixtures shatter like starlight, spitting broken glass everywhere, the water in cups boils and froths, melting through the plastic, and Lovino wonders if it's possible to die from feeling too much.

His voice rips out of his lungs in a half-demented wail. "I'm—not—going—with—YOU!"

Because how fucking perfect. It's wonderful, isn't it? Now he can spend every day in public, under his brother's shadow, having been robbed of the chance to make his name mean something on its own. Isn't it so fucking great that he's allowed at stupid school that only wants him when he can be dragged in on Feliciano's coattails.

Going to Hogwarts as an asterisk under his brother's arrival is worse than not going at all.

Stuck in the eye of the hurricane, Lovino is ripped unceremoniously out of his dark thoughts when his grandfather upends a pitcher of lemon water over his head. All havoc in the apartment stops abruptly as he gapes in shock.

"Lovino," Romulus says, trying for a firm tone despite the tremble in his voice. "You need to calm down."

Shaking and dazed, dripping wet and lemon-scented, Lovino manages to say "I'm-I'm not going."

His Nonno's eyes narrow. "_Passerotto_, it's not a choice. If this kind of magic is bottled up in you, it isn't safe for you to leave it unchanneled."

"I'm not going," Lovino says, dazed, absent, and unresponsive as he wanders into his room, "and you can't make me."

Four days pass, with the door locked. His grandfather will open it occasionally with an 'Alohamora', only for Lovino to reach over from his bed and flick the lock again. If he picked the lock manually, Lovino thinks, he'd be screwed. Can't lock a door with a key still in it. Luckily, Lovino is probably the only wizard who has put any stock into doing things with his own hands.

His grandfather leaves meals for him on the floor, but Lovino isn't hungry, so he takes all the trappings of beef and lamb to give to Bambi-she, accommodatingly, eats them out of his hands. He's got to figure out how to get her some exercise, he thinks to himself. Things...aren't going as he planned. Haven't been, since that owl came by with that goddamned letter and ruined everything.

Day six. Day seven.

On day eight, there is a knock on his bedroom door. Three sharp, polite raps in quick succession.

This isn't his grandfather, and believe it or not, it apparently is possible for Lovino to hate someone even more than he hates Romulus Vargas.

"Fuck off," he snarls, pressing his face into Bambi's flank. The same three raps. He ignores them, strokes his fingers listlessly along the cold obsidian of hooves. Every fifteen minutes or so, the knocks return. Even after four hours, they don't seem to tire.

Grabbing his Swiss Army knife, he creeps along the floor, radiating a sort of dull hostility. After ten or so minutes, the knock sounds again, and the moment it does, Lovino throws open the door and presses the knife to the person on the other side.

It's...a girl. Which, uh. What the buggering fuck?

The young woman across from him looks unbothered despite the blade he's got pressed against her gut. In fact, she's got a slight smile tweaking her mouth when she tells him, "you've got the bottle opener out."

He looks down to realize that yes, in fact, he does. Nonplussed, and feeling kind of stupid, he blurts, "I'll, uh, open your stomach up like a bottle if you try to fuck with me. It's symbolic. Bitch," he adds lamely.

"Noted," the girl says, not intimidated in the slightest. "If you aren't going to finish your beef braciole, I'd like it, please."

Lovino turns to look at the plate on his floor, and tries to decide if he wants to go through the bother of saying, 'actually, I was trying to pick the good bits out of that for my invisible horse.' He isn't feeling particularly social though, so instead he just waves the bottle opener in front of her eyes menacingly and says, "If you try anything…. Watch out."

The girl cocks her head to the side slightly, deep green eyes crossing as she tries to follow the army knife dancing erratically in front of her. She nods once and says, "I'm going to eat it now."

And, sitting on the floor, she does.

Lovino sinks beside her to watch her eat, but she seems to be unruffled by that, too. She has short, dirty-blonde hair that curls at the end, and a wand holstered to her side, despite wearing an aqua blue muggle dress and matching headband. On top of that dress is a red and gold bolero.

"You're wearing some dumb Gryffindor shit," he accuses.

"I'm _wearing_ a dress," she replies, taking an elegant bite out of the braciole.

"The-the fucking-jacket thingy!" He flails his hand at her ensemble, never having known too much about women's fashion. "You're a Gryffindor and you probably were sent here to piss me off until I joined your smoldering hellschool."

She pauses in her eating but, to her credit, doesn't look at him. "Kind-of," she says, and despite himself, Lovino wants to like her honesty. "They wanted to send someone from Hogwarts to talk to you, 'cause your grandda asked them to, but I said it should be me, since I'm the head girl."

"Why?" Lovino asks challengingly. "To get my brother's autograph?" The girl glances at him, looks back to her food.

"Because I heard you were powerful, and I wanted to see," she says, matter-of-factly.

Oh.

"Oh," he says faintly.

"I also figured that we'd have more in common. I'm muggle-born, and I never really cared about going to Hogwarts, either. People in wizard families...don't really get what it's like to have to change your whole life plan at 11. I imagine it's even harder for you now."

Lovino closes his mouth, opens it, closes it. "Y-yeah," he croaks, tears welling up in his eyes. "It's...it's really hard."

"D'you want to talk about it?" And weirdly, he kind of _does_. She's open and unassuming in a way that nobody else has been when talking with him about this shit. Not prying about his feelings, not gazing at him expectantly, but listening and responding all the same. She hasn't, he realizes, talked about his brother even once.

He loosens his posture one vertebrae at a time, and picks an orange slice off the plate.

Even wanting to say something, he isn't sure how to begin. He's spent so long not talking about it that it's hard to start, even when he wants to, and he's afraid that saying anything at all will suddenly burst this dam and he'll blurt every ugly thought he's ever had. He turns the orange slice over and over in his hand. The girl still doesn't say anything, just slows down to better savor her food.

Finally, he says, "I wanted to be a vet. Before the, uh. Magic shit." The girl says nothing beyond a hum of acknowledgement, apparently accustomed to dealing with reticent types. He cultivates courage from the silence. "People...kind of look through me." It's an understatement, to the extreme. "But animals...don't care. They like you-or don't like you-for what you do. I've been studying science, and I'm not very good at it, but I'm the stubbornest arsehole anyone's ever met, they say, and I know I can get into a good University if I just keep pushing."

The girl looks at him, smiles. "That's a lovely goal," she says warmly. Not simpering, not sympathetic. Matter of fact and warm. "I think you'd be a wonderful vet."

Tears threaten to spill down his face again, but he bites them back. "Th-thanks, uh…"

"Manon," she provides, offering him a piece of braciole. Realizing how hungry, he actually is, he takes it. "You know, magical creature care is a thing. You can take whatever electives you want in your later years of school. You could be a magical vet-or even just a regular one. A crup and a dog aren't that different, I should think."

"It's nice of you to try to make me feel better about this bloody nightmare," he sighs. "But I know it doesn't matter. Nonno can make me do whatever he wants. At the end of the day, I'm going to Hogwarts, whether I like it or not."

"What's so bad about going to Hogwarts?" Manon asks, resting her chin on her hand. "Unless you've got a lot of friends at your old school."

He's got, like, one and a half. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You'll feel better," she coaxes. He wrinkles his nose.

"Fuck off."

"Okay," she says easily. There's silence for a while longer. The Gryffindor has finished eating his food and is licking stray remnants of sauce off her fingers. She's very pretty, he realizes in a detached sort of way, and he'd probably be making an absolute fool of himself if she were in his room under any other circumstances. "I'm done now."

"Great," he grouses, pressing against Bambi while trying to pretend he isn't. "Get the hell out of my house."

"Do you want to go shopping together?" she asks suddenly, and Lovino is thrown.

"For-what?"

"Women's knickers," she says with a flat expression, beaming in mischievous delight as he chokes on his own spit and his face flashes though a spectrum of reds. "Nah, I'm just taking the piss. But if you have to go to Hogwarts anyway, then your options are to shop with your grandda or to shop with someone else. So d'you wanna shop with me?"

He could go shopping by himself, he wants to say. It would be easy enough. But, well-for whatever reason he _likes_ Manon, even though it feels like the dumbest fucking decision ever. So even though his gut tells him 'just run before she picks Feliciano over you', his mouth apparently hasn't got the memo.

"Fine," he says instead. "Let's do it together."

Author's Note:

Manon is Belgium. And yeah, that's about it for this one. Let me know if you guys have any pairings you want to see! The only caveat is that I won't write teacher/student, and I've screwed around a LOT with the canon ages, so if two people turn out to be drastically far apart, I might not agree to write 'em together


End file.
